Demand For Dollars Looks Robust To Me

Get Serious!

The financial pages tell me there are dollar problems afoot. The dollar is very weak, they say, and the yen is very strong.

"That's the story of my life," I crack. "I get a real strong yen, but my dollar's too weak to afford it."

The financial pages are not amused. This is serious business, they insist.

"If you say so," I reply. "I remember when we had strong dollars. Why, when I was a boy, our dollars were so strong they could lick anyone on the block. I only had to pull one out of my pocket and the neighborhood bully would run away, screaming."

I am making this up, of course. When I was a boy, I would pull that dollar out of my pocket and give it to the neighborhood bully, so he wouldn't beat me up.

Actually, my dollars seem to be stronger than they ever were. They must be, because it's impossible for me to break one. When I hand one over to buy something and ask for change, I get incredulous looks. Nothing costs less than a dollar any more. You can still break a $5 bill, if you buy something quite small, but a single dollar is unbreakable.

Nonetheless, the financial pages must know what they are talking about, so I ask them how the dollar got to be so weak. I don't understand a thing they say for the next five minutes.

For example, they tell me the government is trying to increase demand for the dollar. I can't understand why this is a problem. Most people I meet want all the dollars they can get their hands on. The demand for dollars looks pretty robust to me. Every day I get bills in the mail from people demanding dollars from me.

"Should I go to the government and say, `Give me some dollars?' " I ask.

The financial pages tell me not to be such an idiot, and they scornfully toss a stack of economic indicators at me.

Now I am getting nervous. There was a news report a couple of weeks ago - this is the truth - that some businessman actually jumped out of a window on Wall Street. Wasn't that what they were doing in 1929 after the stock market crashed? I hope this isn't an economic indicator. Will we soon see people on the sidewalk selling apples for $5?

When the financial pages are not looking, I pull a dollar out of my wallet. "How are you feeling?" I ask it.

"Pretty weak," it says.

"How come?" I ask.

"Isn't it obvious?" it responds. "I'm not getting enough exercise."

The dollar explains its predicament. The banking business has become computerized, it explains, so nowadays all these financial transactions are performed electronically. Hardly any actual money ever gets moved anywhere, it says.

"Just sitting around in the vault, day after day," the dollar sighs. "No wonder we've gotten flabby and puny."

I promise to put all my dollars on a low-impact aerobics program, to see if that helps.

I try to share this insight with the financial pages when they come back, but now they are going on and on about the peso. Apparently the peso is mixed up in this, too. The dollar is being loaned out to prop up the peso, which somehow makes it weaker against the yen. I can't tell whether this means it would help or hurt matters if I bought more tortilla chips, or sold my Toyota.

"Kind of makes you wish you were Japanese, doesn't it?" I say.

The financial pages are dumbfounded at my ignorance. The Japanese are in a fix, they say, because the yen is way too strong. Don't I know that having a musclebound currency is just as bad as having a feeble one?

Next week, the financial pages promise to explain to me why it's bad news when too many people have jobs. I can hardly wait to hear that one.